Nyko Air Flo Game Pad Review - Testing
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For testing, I used a number of demos available from
File Planet:
Halo for PC,
Need for Speed Underground, and Microsoft’s
Combat Flight Simulator.
After downloading the games, I plugged the game pad into my monitor's side USB port and Windows XP recognized it, installed the correct drivers, and let me know it was ready to use -- all with out me having to do anything. It even said "Your Air Flo game controller is ready for use," as opposed to the generic controller message I got with the PlayStation game pad.
When first using the PlayStation game pad, I found that I had to go into my control panel and access the “Game Controller” section to calibrate the two analog sticks before they would work properly. Naturally I thought the same would apply with the Air Flo, but when I went to calibrate it, I was surprised to see that they were both perfectly calibrated and all buttons seemed to be working from the get-go.
Halo
I started with Halo as I already had a bit of experience with it. (My playing it before was a slight downfall because I had already gotten used to using the keyboard/mouse setup.) After about a half-hour of programming all the buttons to perform the way I wanted them to, I spent another half-hour getting used to controlling the game with the Air Flo. Once I started getting into the gameplay (and getting thrashed by the Covenant aliens), my palms started to get a little slippery so I switched the fan on low and it whirred silently to life. I noticed the difference right away as the dampness disappeared almost immediately. Once the action got a little more intense though, the small amount of air being pushed through the holes wasn’t nearly enough so I clicked the fan on high. This time I wasn’t greeted by a silent burst of air however. It was more like turning on a hairdryer (with cool air, of course). Okay it wasn’t quite that loud but pretty close. Even with my headphones on and the volume about halfway up the fan was still audible. The cooling, on the other hand (no pun intended), was great.
The sensitivity wasn’t that great with the analog sticks, however, which really made me yearn for mouse control. They felt a bit stiffer than the PlayStation controller’s analog sticks. It wasn’t so bad for moving around or driving one of the various vehicles, but when it came to the shoot’em-up part of the game (which is the majority of the gameplay) all it took was a slight movement (which would normally turn your character about 20 degrees) to make them turn about 90 degrees. It made playing Halo against online competitors absolutely impossible because the small amount of lag normally experienced was compounded by the poor sensitivity of the analog sticks, leaving me pointing my gun at the wall or one of my teammates more often than my enemy.
Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator 3
I’m not a big flight sim advocate, but Combat Flight Simulator 3 is good for enthusiasts as well as novices. It has all the great features of other realistic flight sims, but gives you guns, missiles, and bombs! (Things don't get much better than that.)
With the number of buttons available on this game pad, I had no problem setting all of the necessary functions to easily accessible locations on it. Here the stiffness of the sticks was actually appreciated, as flying a plane in a sim like this doesn’t require lightning fast and deadly accurate sensitivity.
Need for Speed Underground
Now for the final demo: NFSU. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to play this game with the keyboard, so if you're planning on trying it out yourself, make sure you have a decent game pad. Air Flo seems to fit that bill pretty well. In circuit mode, the analog sticks had just the right amount of give to make a good turn. In drag mode the buttons are a tad on the stiff side, but that is a really good thing; you don’t want to accidentally shift, as one “over rev” or “short shift” can easily cost you the entire race. The fan was really great here, since I tend to get into racing games more than others, and when the action gets intense, my hands tend to sweat a lot. I turned the fan on high and cranked my headphones to drown out the noise. My hands stayed totally dry the entire time. Oddly enough, when I was done, I got a rather creepy feeling, because my hands were cool and dry, but a bit clammy. (Like how girls' hands used to feel in gym class when we were forced to square dancing.)
Next: Conclusion >>
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